


The Tern

by MoonlightSword



Category: Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: Character Death, Childhood Trauma, Gen, One Shot, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23530894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonlightSword/pseuds/MoonlightSword
Summary: Do you ever feel like there’s a trespasser in your mind? Like there’s someone there that shouldn’t be?
Kudos: 1





	The Tern

**Author's Note:**

> Posted in celebration of the upcoming live-action movies. I hope you find it interesting or enjoyable. Thank you to my friend (you know who you are) for convincing me to upload as well as proofreading this.
> 
> I didn't use character tags as I didn't want to spoil who or what it was about (but you can probably figure it out pretty quickly once you start reading).

Somewhere within, all of us yearn for a place not here. For somewhere better.

The little boy’s chin and arms are resting on the docked ship’s railing, covering completely his sour and downturned mouth, as wisps of his faded hair flow in the slightly chilling winter breeze. He's standing on his toes slightly and his back is turned on the country he was born and raised in. His homeland was now an unforgivable crime unto itself, he didn't have the stomach to stay any longer, it makes him feel sick to his stomach. All he can see beyond the lifeless strands of his fringe is the endlessly murky and turquoise sea, his eyes and ears can’t help but follow the waves repeatedly crashing into each other. A massive, hollow expanse – a future denied to him some moons ago and a hole left in his very being. The sun shines and hangs high above his head, amongst an armada of greyed clouds and the chilling bite of the winter breeze. The sound of water somewhat drowns out the mixed garbles and ramblings that indicate a multi-ethnic group of both passengers and crew. None of them pay attention to him anyway, even if he is bloodied, bruised and wearing rags barely hanging off him at this point. He’s just another orphan amongst an endless list of many others. He doesn’t pay attention to them either, most people just give him an odd look when they dare to take a gander into his eyes. Maybe there’s a fire brewing in them that’s uncharacteristic of a twelve-year-old, or maybe they just don’t hold any life anymore – he wouldn’t know, he doesn't know when he last gazed into his own eyes in a reflection. He can’t even remember the last time he looked in a mirror.

He wonders if this apathy and disdain for those around him has always existed, or if this is just a consequence of his unfortunate circumstances, brought to fruition unintentionally. Either way, he can only think of how terrible everyone else is. He runs his hand through his wild, muddied hair, twirling some strands in his bony fingers. It still confuses him.

He’s pretty sure it was black back then.

Yes, that was it. He never really used to take notice of his hair colour much – who the hell does, anyway? But it was black, it ran in the family in fact - everyone had dark, raven-black hair. His changed for some reason, it’s white now. It’s been that way for a while, he remembers how it slowly faded, gradually shifted its colour every time he took a quick gander at his own obscured reflection in a mud puddle (which he would then drink from). First, it was just a few strands that were slightly off-kilter and greyed, then the next thing he knew, he had an entire head of snow-white. He can swear his skin got paler as well. He doesn’t really know why any of this is happening to him. Weren’t only old people supposed to have white hair? He’s not old, he’s just a boy. Why white? It began changing after the worst day of his life. Is it linked to that? Is it a sign that he's dying on the inside? Is it too late? Why did his skin also go pale? Is he turning into a ghost?

He rubs his eyes whilst he silently yawns. He’s just so tired, he can’t even remember the last time he had a good night's sleep. It drains him. He can't explain it well, but it's like his mind's still awake as his body rests. He narrows his eyes as he lets himself be cut off from his other senses, he blinks as the waves calm down and the vessel he’s on starts to leave the harbour. He barely registers the ship’s piercing horn as his exhausted mind drifts to a particular mental image, someone he lost long ago, her face vibrant and full of life as it always was, always used to be (if he's remembering correctly). It makes him ponder on the time where his own life actually made sense. There used to be something tangible he could take hold of with his hand and curl it in his palm. Close to his chest, as a moth drawn to a flickering flame - as all life is drawn to the warmth of the sun. Back when there was a roof over his head. They had a fire as well. Warm and dry. Quite cosy, one could say. A home made out of love.

But it had all been washed away.

As he profusely shivers from a gust of cold winter wind, he starts to pine for those days in his mind all over again: The days when he would rest his head on her lap and she would gracefully pull a comb through his snarled, raven-black hair with long, pale fingers. When she would drape her scarf around his shoulders whenever he felt cold (and he was _cold_ often even back then; the temple priest always used to warn him and her that the cold gathers around troubled hearts, but he thought that man an old fool and that he should have just shut the hell up…perhaps there was wisdom in his words after all). When she would pull him close in their sleep and hold him tight, keeping him safe from the cruelty of the world and his own evil nightmares. When she would carry him on her back before he learned to walk. Whenever she, regrettably, got short with him due to something ridiculous or unacceptable he had said or done. Whenever-

His painfully nostalgic musings are interrupted by a sharp metallic clang that comes from his side. His eyes open fully as his gaze shifts to the left, then to the right. In the very corner of his eye he sees something resting on the railing next to him. It’s...it's a tern. A tern so purely white, it almost glows out of radiance. Its eyes and head are as raven-black as she is, in both life and death.

He turns his head fully and rubs his eyes with both finger and thumb. Is this a cruel joke? White and black, the two colours that linger within him the most – along with a deep crimson red. The type that courses through your body, the type that flowed freely on that terrible day, the type that never leaves your head despite you desperately wanting it to just go away. It's ironic that thinking of such a deep colour can make his face so white and devoid of it.

The tern stands high and proud, its head and shoulders are figuratively raised above the crystal-green ocean and all life on the deck. He remembers hearing stories about the tern, not from who (his father maybe), but stories all the same. Apparently, they’re unbound creatures, never held down by worry, desire or other earthly factors. They fly free directly under the warmth of the very sun that gives comfort to all, spreading their wings to reach unparalleled heights that man could only ever dream of. They’re also strong, very strong, they don’t need to be bogged down by their own weakness, they take off and land with such an elegance that it could bring a person to tears. They are souls clad in the spirit of individuality, of freedom, of hope.

Time begins to twist and turn; the tern is making him narrow his eyes and twitch his mouth slightly. He quietly gasps to himself as the tern cranes its neck up – he can’t believe it, but right then, he of all people thinks it’s beautiful. 

Defying his own typical sense of judgment (and that’s assuming he even has one anymore), he finds himself reaching out to the tern slowly with his right arm. His hand trembles as his stomach slumps in a strange way, something he hasn’t felt in a very long time. A lump forms in his throat as his fingertips are just a few inches away from touching the snow-white bird, he can’t stop thinking about its dignified pose, its majestic visage, its grace. It reminds him of her so much in so many ways, it's like his heart is aching. He eyes the rips and tears in his sleeve as he whispers for her under his breath, his heart beats faster and faster and he just can't stop it. He doesn’t know exactly why he’s doing this, maybe a foolish part of him wants the tern to take him under its wings, to take him to somewhere not here. Somewhere safe. To paradise. More likely, he just wants her to hold him again and say everything will be okay. To come back to him again and make him whole once more, a proper person…someone with actual, quantifiable worth. His mind soon starts playing tricks on him again, as it likes to do nowadays, and once again he can’t distinguish reality from illusion; eventually, he’s actually reaching out to her in his mind's heart, as her image takes the bird’s place.

He essentially begs the tern to take him with them. He pleads for respite, for peace…for something worth holding onto. He’s tired, he wants things to actually make sense for once, _just once_. Was it too much to ask? Why does it have to be like this?

The bird then suddenly snaps its head and immediately takes flight, leaving the little boy’s hand in the dust, untouched and alone. He blinks.

After a painfully elongated moment of staring at the empty space where the tern once rested its beautiful wings, he hastily brings his hand back to underneath his chin and stares at the sea again. His breathing becomes uneven as his vision gets unexpectedly blurry.

Even before he had lost everything he ever cared about (and to be fair, that 'everything' was just _one_ thing), there always lingered a sense of fear. The fear he would lose it all one day. Even in those moments where her palm rested on his cheek while their foreheads touched and they smiled together under the dim candlelight before going to sleep, there was always the fear that he would lose it all, that he would wake up in the morning and she would be dead. Maybe that's why he was always so on-edge and difficult to calm down.

There’s nothing to go back to, nothing that could make him complete, at ease, happy, joyful, anything. There's just nothing anymore. He’s fundamentally unfinished, he’ll forever be like this until the day he dies and falls into Hell. No stupid bird could ever change that, right? It’s just a tern. It can’t do anything for you, it can’t take you anywhere.

He feels something warm rolling down both of his cheeks as he finds his face feeling unexpectedly damp. He wipes himself with a single finger and brings it to his eyes, seeing that it is indeed moist. He stares listlessly for a few moments, only to then realise that the ship is far out into the middle of the wide diamond sea, his homeland already a distant crag in the current.

In a moment of unprecedented weakness, the child tightens his fists and, allows himself to whimper; his face is buried in his arms that rest on the railing as life around him on the deck continues as normal. He spends a considerable amount of time bawling against his own weak body - he doesn't even have the strength to put up any sort of spectacle, it's a quiet and underplayed sobbing. It’s not exactly the first time since that day that he’s acted like this, that he’s let himself briefly let go of the bottomless well of anger and frustration he harbours in his heart. Without it he’s nothing, has absolutely nothing to hold onto in this world, so he’ll never abandon it fully. But sometimes, like now on the deck, the veil is lifted and he’s like a completely different person, a hollow being with no core, his hand empty. The only thing he can think of is his own inadequacy, his failure to look after her. If he wasn't such a damned, detestable weakling, he could have saved her. But now he's fleeing his own homeland, their shared home, all because he's-

 _Crybaby_ , her voice suddenly rings through his ears, _you broke your promise._

Suddenly, he bites his lip so hard small droplets of blood begin to form, yet he's not feeling much pain. He stares blankly into what looks to bystanders as the sea itself whilst he takes in her ominous whispers, a serene smile still on her face, and his eyes soon start to sting from not even bringing himself to blink. He sniffles reflexively, over and over, as her words echo through his mind.

Promise. He can't remember exactly how young he was at the time, but he was no older than eight. She was at her desk, writing in a book. He remembers her looking sad. He put his hand on hers and told her that he would always look after and protect her and that it was a promise. She smiled at that and thanked him. She didn't smile often, so that moment was special for him. But now? That ended up amounting to nothing, an empty promise he couldn't keep.

_I hate seeing you like this, it's shameful and disgusting._

He has no words in response, he takes his punishment like a man. 

_Are you going to keep crying over being too weak to protect me, my dear little brother? Or are you going to stop being a whiny, pathetic crybaby for once and do something about it? What will you do?_

Her speech twists a knife in his gut, he gulps as most of the blood from his mouth pours down his chin (he ends up swallowing some of it). The harshness of her choice of words doesn’t gel with her expression or tone. It’s uncanny. He ponders more on it, on everything, and his brow furrows.

A spectre...or...maybe a mental image? Even he's not sure what it is anymore. But he thinks it’s really her and he’s not gone crazy. Likely. It's not the first time he's heard her voice, but she's been speaking to him more and more recently. Each time it's just that little bit more like how he remembers her voice sounding. There was a certain degree of formality and elegance to it - as expected from someone of their family's social standing, yet it also gave out a noise so soft and gentle, so impossibly warm and kind, it used to make him want to weep. Whenever she talked to him, he wanted to cry. 

Crybaby. Crybaby? That’s probably too apt a description for him in all honesty. Everyone around him always used to comment on his sensitivity, on how _emotional_ he was - friends, family, pretty much anyone. He recalls crying, screaming, yelling, shouting, bawling, wailing so much throughout his years, much more than what’s considered normal. Maybe that's why he was never very popular. He always used to nudge her in her sleep in the dead of night whenever he had nightmares, he was always in tears, begging to be told everything was going to be alright. Maybe she was wrong when she would reassure him that things would be okay while guiding her hand through his hair – or maybe she was just plain lying to his face. But he used to believe her, he always clung onto everything she said. The very same voice that moved him to the verge of tears every time he listened to it was also a source of solace and comfort. 

Was that a mistake? But the thought of her being wrong just isn't right. 

The tern is probably somewhere far off now, a place not here. It’s gliding blissfully in the deep blue expanse above the clouds, extending its wings out in yearning and climbing the sky to reach the heavens. It’s free, unburdened by worry, not shackled to anything. It’s reaching paradise, and he’s stuck down here in this miserable place, a world with lost beauty – or none to begin with, perhaps. Is there a difference? He doesn’t even know anymore. Did it matter? Probably not. Not that anything actually matters anymore, the illusion had already been shattered. The tern can’t take him anywhere, anyway. Expecting the heavens to guide and support you is a fool’s endeavour. Buddha and the gods had turned their backs on him.

If you want to make a marked difference in this world, you have to do it yourself. Truth be told, he already knew that - deep down, anyway. Somewhere darker than black. He thinks he realised that to be the truth on that winter’s day, when he helplessly collapsed to his knees in the snow with endless streams of tears in his eyes, his whole world flipped on its head and crashing down around him. There was no one to help him that day, to lift him up from his pathetic stupor into their arms and assure him that everything would be okay in spite of the sheer and unspeakable horror he had just witnessed. The same horror etched into his mind - he will _never_ forget that image.

Illusion, dream or reality, whatever, the tranquillity of this world had all been struck down once she died. No, that's not right...she didn’t die. She was _murdered_.

_So, you're finally going to do something about it. That's good._

He grits his teeth as memories of _that man_ rush through his mind. The man he’s always loathed and despised with a passion brighter and hotter than hellfire – burning his very spirit like the sun that would usually just give warmth. The boy quickly scolds himself for daring to cry, that it’s a sign of weakness, that she doesn’t want him to act so childishly or petulantly. She wants him to become strong in order to avenge her. He can hear her voice begging for a justice painfully denied to her and he has to remind her that he’s still too young and weak. He aggressively wipes the tears away as he twists his eyes and mouth into a permanent scowl. She died with nothing but rage and regret in her heart, a grudge unfulfilled and a shared hatred not yet quenched. Remember that, over and over again, let it linger forever in your mind, let it fully drive you now. Throw away fear. Discard compassion. Cast aside mercy. Quell positive emotion. You don’t need them - they are all useless feelings for a bygone era and bygone people destined to be thrown to the dirt, washed away by the currents of time into the endless expanse of obscurity, pouring into infinite, eternal nothingness.

He thinks that the people on the deck that can see and hear him are probably giving him a concerned gander, hidden murmurs that he’s some sort of freak that’s not right in the head. A troubled child. Haunted. Demented. Disturbed. Broken. Wrong. The old song and dance by this point, really – he’s a pariah. Again, he doesn’t care, they’d never understand anyway. Why should he explain himself to other people? They had all abandoned him, why should they hold him to their shallow standards?

There is nothing in this world you want to protect anymore, nothing that is even _worthy_ of protection – the only thing constant now is that there is nothing constant. You already failed horribly there, you managed to fail where most don't. Now you must only attack, kill, crush, destroy. Only then will you become strong – strong enough to exterminate from the face of this existence that you should have already pulverised under your foot like the worthless refuse it ultimately is. Anyone who even thinks to commit the foolish crime of standing in your way – physically and spiritually - absolutely must be completely and utterly annihilated. They are to become but dust underneath your shoe, boot, whatever. This is the correct way to live now. Everyone alive might as well be your prey, else you shall become the prey yourself. Stop being such a big crybaby already, it’s your fault she was murdered by _that man_ , you were too weak to stop it. All you could do is stare in disbelief and cry endlessly, unbecoming of someone who had the role of looking after her. Someone who doesn’t even have the strength to protect that which they care about doesn’t deserve a ‘normal life’ anyway, so stop fighting and clinging onto a semblance of innocent hope and cast it all aside.

That path is gone now.

Submit to your own anger, let wrath consume your very being and make it the source of your own strength. If you do that, she will always smile for you – she will be proud of your strength, your determination, and will forever be on your side if you do this. You have felt endless rage since that terribly fateful day in the snow and she has surely felt the same, so now is the time to embrace it with your entire being, without even a single shred of doubt or reserve. If you don’t, she will stop smiling for you and you will die. You’ll have done absolutely nothing – that’ll only make her upset. And you don't want her to be even more upset than she is now, right? Look at her, she's got tears in her life now and she's begging for retribution. It’s time to take a step forward. Do it now.

All he can do for the rest of the journey is lean against that railing and stare intently at her image in his eye’s mind. Thinking of her is the only thing in this world that can give him even a hint of a measure of comfort. If she keeps smiling for him, he knows he will be able to do anything, to become more powerful than anyone or anything that exists. The knowledge that he can never feel her warmth in this world again always used to put a thousand needles in his heart, yet at that moment he resolves to bury that feeling deep inside him. Hatred is all that remains. Without it, he’s not even nothing, he is less than nothing.

One day, he shall return to his homeland and bring down the most agonizing and torturous of living hells on that man – for death is only an instance of pain and thus too mild a punishment. He will make him perish under anguish and regret; it will be the cruelest form of retribution imaginable. He deserves no less, not him or his newly corrupted nation that he has propped up with the sword that spilled her very blood. He will ruthlessly stamp out his spirit and break him relentlessly, even if he begs for it, he shall not receive a single slither of mercy. No one will.

He’s heading to a different place, somewhere that’s not here. Hopefully, he can stomach to be there this time. He waits eagerly for the ship to arrive at its destination. No more tears.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think there is an actual canonical basis for his skin turning pale, it was my own idea that I thought fit with the character and the white visual motif.
> 
> Thank you very much for reading.


End file.
